Spent Chickens in School Lunches

Spent Chickens in School Lunches

Remember how when you were in school, everyone made fun of how horrible the cafeteria food was? At my school, at least, there was a rumour that our food was grade F, and that prisoners received grade D.

Regardless of how true that is, there’s a reason that school food sucks.

It’s this:

This is what we're feeding to schoolchildren.

“USA Today just reported that over the past eight years, the government has handed the egg industry $145 million taxpayer dollars for flesh that would probably otherwise be turned into pet food or compost.” (Vegan.com)

That’s right, after the chickens have basically laid eggs to the point of death–usually at around 1 1/2 to 2 years of age (they can live between 10 and 15 years normally)–they are considered “spent” and basically thrown away. (It’s the same in the organic and free range industry, incidentally.) There was a fairly famous case in which a farm in California killed 15,000 spent hens by tossing them live into a wood chipper; though cruelty charges were raised against the farm, they were dropped because it was proven to be “common industry practice.” (You can read more about this case at our page here.)

The bodies of spent hens are so weak, bruised, and depleted that their meat is almost useless; in the true spirit of the industry, of course, there’s always something to do with it. Usually it goes into soup, pot pies, baby food, and any other product that easily hides bruising–low quality meat products, basically. And school lunches.